Friday, October 17, 2014

In two weeks we will begin 3 months of indulging. Candy, followed by Thanksgiving dinner, Chanukah, Kwaanza, Christmas and New Year's. The extra ten pounds. YUM!! Okay, I know I'm rushing things, but my calendar says it is exactly two weeks until Halloween. Here's a great list of resources for you and your students!

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Today I bumped into a colleague of mine who was looking for the building's Scantron machine to grade a test. When I asked him if he had ever used Google forms to self-grade his quizzes, he told me he had never heard of it. The great thing was that he was open to learning about Google forms and Flubaroo. So for those of you out there who want to move away from Scantron forms and step into the 21st Century, here are a bunch of tutorials to help you on your way. This one's for you, Larry!!

Brent Coley- there are 5 videos which take you step-by-step, including creating, editing, analyzing/sharing, adding images, and creating a self-grading quiz with Flubaroo. Everything you need on one page.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

I recently received a request for iPad apps that ESL/ELL learners could use to adapt to the English language. The following list are mostly free apps, with descriptions quoted from Apple's iTunes page.

Dragon Dictation- “Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. In fact, it’s up to five (5) times faster than typing on the keyboard”

Google Translate- translate 80 languagesiGE Lite- “iGE is a guide to the structure of the English Language that is specifically designed for mobile devices to meet the needs of busy teachers and students.”

Phrasal Verbs Machine- “animated illustrations of 100 phrasal verbs set in the circus world of our main character Phraso and his friends.”

Phrasalstein- “Doctor Phrasalstein who, with the help of his friends, will teach us 100 phrasal verbs using animations inspired by the classic “horror movie” genre, with a touch of humour and irony."

Frequently, phrasal verbs have more than one meaning. For the examples we’ve selected, we’ve used the most common and well-known meaning for some while going with the more obscure meaning for others. In any case, you’ll always find an example sentence in English as well as other meanings whenever they are useful or necessary. What’s more, you’ll be provided with the translation in Spanish, German, Italian, Russian and French. "

TED- students can watch inspiring talks and practice their listening skills

Vocaba- “Vocabla is an app for improving your English vocabulary. You can translate, collect & memorize words, phrases, idioms and other chunks of language.”

Word Mover- “Word Mover allows children and teens to create "found poetry" by choosing from word banks and existing famous works; additionally, users can add new words to create a piece of poetry by moving/manipulating the text.

FEATURES:

- Multi-user poem storage

- User management with the ability to delete or restore within 2 weeks